The conference will open up the nuances of the term ‘prosaic’ by exploring the privileged relationship between the novel genre and multiple and complex categories of the ‘everyday’. Building on John Plotz’s notion of the novel as exemplary ‘portable property’, the conference will address the relationship between novel-reading as everyday activity and the novel’s prosaic subject matter, whether this is conceived as material object, cultural practice, or speech act.

Suggested topics:
The novel and things
The novel and film/and TV
Readerships of the novel
The novel and gender
The novel and childhood
Queer novels
Psychologies of the novel
Novel genres
The odd or uncategorisable
The secular imagination
Book history and the novel
The novel and the digital everyday
Characters as quasi-persons
Novel worlds
The novel and the institutionalisation of affect
The novel as political action
Temporalities of the novel
The novel and the forms of property
The scale of the novel

Proposals for 20 minute papers or for 3 paper panels sessions should be sent to Professor Vanessa Smith (vanessa.smith@sydney.edu.au) by March 31 2014

cfp categories:

african-american

american

childrens_literature

cultural_studies_and_historical_approaches

eighteenth_century

gender_studies_and_sexuality

general_announcements

international_conferences

modernist studies

popular_culture

theory

twentieth_century_and_beyond

victorian

By web submission at 01/12/2014 - 10:14

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